I’ve been in mobile for almost nine years and have always been keenly interested in how context can be affected by mobile. At a minimum, I’m interested in things like:

The location in which mobile is used

How location can affect user’s modality (ranging from passive to task-driven activities).

Which content people choose to consume

How much content they will consume

User’s receptivity to disruptive marketing messages

The location awareness of the device and the opportunities that creates in terms of relevance of display advertising, search results, etc.

I’m privy to many of the question asked by agencies about geo-targeting. It has been very common over the last year for our team to be asked “Can you do geo-fencing?” This question often comes without the benefit of an understanding of the true client objective. More often than not, we are not in the room when this idea first came to mind and are not in a position to challenge many of the assumptions that drove it. Naturally scale is always an issue to consider with any targeting.

I like to go further and challenge the objective in the first place. A lot of the questions about geo-fencing ignore some basic things we already understand about consumers, how they move through the marketing funnel and the timing involved. For example, does a person move from consideration to intent just because they are 100 feet from a store? Can you affect this timing with a display ad on mobile? Is that ad best served in the same DMA, perhaps 8 hours before the consumer is front of the store? How does the process change when considering big ticket vs. impulse purchases? Much to consider.

Digiday published a “debate” today with publishers weighing in on mobile web vs. mobile apps. While the answer may often be “both, ” the fact that this debate is still going on is a bit funny to me. For some things, apps will definitely be important, but if social, search and sharing are important parts of a publisher’s marketing and discovery strategy, I can’t see how they can ignore browser-based content.

After a concerted effort by FT to get its subscribers to switch from their native ipad/iphone apps to the paper’s HTML5 web app, they have now pulled those native subscription apps from the App Store. Bravo!

While this approach won’t work for all content owners, it clearly sets the stage for others to follow suit. Those publishers that own – and want to continue to own – direct subscriber relationships, can provision HTML5 web apps that deliver an excellent customer experience directly via their desktop and mobile websites. No percentage paid to Apple, more fluid development/upgrades, no review process and all the customer data a publisher typically enjoys.

I can’t be sure how many subs the FT has via the HTML5 web app. PaidContent and Mediapost both speculate in recent coverage, but I can’t glean a clear answer (please help me out if you can). The FT decision to pull the apps from the store certainly suggests they are happy with the numbers and how they are trending.

It will be interesting to see which publishers follow FT’s lead here. The NYTimes has a great Chrome web app and others are working away on HTML5 executions of one kind or another. Apps are not going away, but I predict HTML5 web apps will be a priority for many over the next twelve months.

I agree wholeheartedly that It’s time for mobile rich media to scale. The slapping-banners-on-phones business has become one of arbitrage…Networks buying and selling from each other like low-rent real estate brokers. The proverbial race to the bottom. Haven’t we seen this movie before?

There is an excellent story to be told about engagement rates from rich media ads on mobile. A beautiful experience with high engagement will be attractive to brands if they can get it at scale. Getting away from proprietary SDK’s and other obstacles to scale is critical to that end. Using HTML5 for mobile rich media ads should help this happen.